


and i'll tell you all about it when i see you again

by Quire



Series: roll your eyes and i'll go away [1]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Healing, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 12:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13704327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quire/pseuds/Quire
Summary: "The others on their way?""No."





	and i'll tell you all about it when i see you again

**Author's Note:**

> For the usual suspect. Does it still count as a gift fic if you ping the recipient at 3am demanding - and receiving - their help with writing it? ♥

_Featureless blue. Above, below, all around him, no break in the glare, just blue._

_And then the light, so bright he thinks his eyelids have been burned off, for a moment._

_And then the slow, crashing impact of reality, of realising: that's it, that's all she wrote, there's no going back, promises or not._

Used to be it was Cougar who'd startle into alertness still and tense and coiled, stinking of nightmare-sweat. Used to be Cougar who shuddered and broke out of sleep into wakefulness with the suddenness of someone falling through a glass window.

Jensen can't wake up silent like he could, though. Cougar never screamed himself awake like this - probably because snipers who made noise waking up ended up dead real fast.

Just like snipers who didn't.

_Fuck._

Jensen contorts himself over the shitty hotel sink to let cold water hit him full in the face, rubs his throat with one hand, raw from the yelling, and breathes deep. Zero five hundred and he should be fucking _sleeping_. He's not a goddamn soldier any more, he's not even a whatever-the-fuck-the-Losers-became, he's a dead man living in Antigua with nothing to fucking do all day. He should _not_ be awake at this godforsaken hour.

Cougar never slept this late. He'd do that freezing-in-place thing in his sleep, then his eyes would snap open and Jensen would see the goddamn chopper crash in them every morning. Then he'd get out of bed, use up all the hot water, and fuck off to the nearest range while Jensen went back to sleep. Not a great morning ritual but it was still the best thing Jensen had ever known.

Waking up without him is bullshit and Jensen's still fucking furious about it, every single day. Even without inheriting his goddamn nightmares. 

No chopper crashes, though. Jensen's nightmares are of blue sea, blue sky. A searing flash of white-hot light. And the look in Pooch's eyes. He can't ever get that out of his head. 

Jensen fucking hates the colour blue.

_The others on their way?_

_No._

He'd take the fucking chopper and twenty-five dead kids over it a million times a day if he had a choice. That had been shit, but not - not like this. Not world-ending shit. Not rip-your-goddamn-heart-out shit. 

Someone bangs on the door, yelling about the noise. Jensen swipes at his face with his towel, grabs his glasses, and goes to yell back at them. Nobody's hurt, nobody's dying, just a bad dream, can they just leave him the _fuck_ alone?

*

There's a million stray cats in Antigua. Jensen doesn't know what it is about them that makes him so angry, unless it's that everything makes him angry these days and they're just a convenient source of blame. He sees them everywhere. Tails lashing in the shadows, curious yellow eyes watching from rooftops. Mostly they're not all that bold, it's just that Jensen's good at seeing the things on the outskirts.

Has to be. Nobody is here to see them for him any more.

One of them is watching him, a little grey one with something wrong with its legs, eyes blue and judgmental. Cats always look so judgmental.

"Shut up," Jensen tells it, and keeps walking.

*

He spends most of the time in a shitty little internet cafe, underground off a back street, full of teenagers playing whatever the latest MMORPG is. Once he would have known. Once he would have been playing it with them. Better things to do now, and they're the kind of things best done from sleazy pay-cash never-give-a-name internet cafes.

Like keep an eye on Maria Alvarez, fashion designer currently living in Chicago, and make sure she's free of surveillance - at least, by anyone except him. He's pretty sure she's safe - she and Cougs came to the US as kids, stayed as DREAMers, precious little paperwork linking the two of them and it's not like Cougs was real talkative about his family. Jensen only knows about her because he's a nosy fucker, and his research didn't stop at the official files. He's pretty sure Roque didn't know Cougs had any family at all.

"Pretty sure" isn't good enough. If he relied on "pretty sure" none of them would be alive. So: first stop, check in on Maria.

She's doing fine. She looks too damn much like Cougar. Jensen doesn't look at pictures if he can help it.

Stop two on the crazy train: check up on Jolene and the kids. They know Pooch is alive. Worse, Roque knew _they_ were alive. That's a problem. Maybe they should be his first daily check. Whatever. What difference does five minutes make? 

Three: ... who fucking knows any more? He skims niche messageboards in search of mentions of Aisha, but without much energy. If she survived, she thinks he's dead anyway. Crazy bitch, yeah, but she was doing what she believed in. He isn't pissed at her the way he's pissed at Roque. She was never one of them to start with. 

There's never any mention of her, anyway. If she's alive, she's gone ghost. Too smart not to.

Stegler's bought plane tickets to Antigua, a month away. Oh, great, that's gonna be almost exactly One Year Later. Well, that ought to be fun. He sends Pooch a warning text. 

And that's it. Day's work: done. He skims a little cash from one of Max's henchmen's bank accounts - he's running low - and then gets up and trudges back out into the too-bright sunlight. Not much more to do, except drink.

*

There's a grey cat staring at him beside the liquor store doorway.

"Fuck you, cat." 

It lifts its tail in the air and stalks away, but he can't shake the feeling of being disapproved of.

*

What makes him still _Jensen_ , if he doesn't even own a smartphone, let alone a laptop? But that's where he's at.

Too risky, both options. He's a good enough hacker to know there's always someone better, and he's a good enough soldier to know that if Jake Jensen ever shows his face again, there's gonna be a fuck of a lot of guns pointed in this direction. Besides, it just seems fucking pointless. He can do anything he _needs_ from the internet cafe. And he doesn't _want_ to do anything else.

*

He doesn't think about Jess and Bethie. They're safe. They think he's dead. He pays an old hacker friend to keep an eye on them so that even his internet cafe browsing can't be connected to them.

It's fine. It's better this way.

*

The cat follows him back to the hotel.

*

There's no fucking variation, that's the thing. That's why he's attaching so much importance to this mangy grey fucking street cat. It's the only new thing in the last - ten months. Nine months. However long he's been here. There were a few months before he got here that kinda - he doesn't really know where they went.

He does know exactly how many days - hours - minutes since the nuke went off.

Another thing not to think about.

"You're losing it, man," Pooch tells him, and Jensen gives him the middle finger with one hand while he brings his beer back to his mouth with the other.

He knows. He knows, and there's no point in talking about it, and he _knows_ his lack of talking freaks Pooch out. Hell, it freaks him out too. There's just nothing he can fucking do about it, that's the thing. 

"Girls are fine," Pooch says, after Jensen fails to reply. "In case you wondered." 

"I know." Jensen waves a hand in the air, grins, a little smug even now. "You think I don't watch out for them?"

"You watch out for them?" Pooch looks - touched, almost. Jensen shrugs. 

"Someone's gotta." 

"Yeah, but who's looking after you, man?"

Jensen raises an eyebrow, and turns around to scan the beach behind them.

The cat looks back.

*

"I am too drunk to be - not be - to be thing," Jensen tells it, later, when Pooch has gone back to his hotel. It's night; the air here is thick, warm, humid. The breeze lifts his hair a little and scrapes raw across his clean-shaven chin. The cafe is long since closed; the moon is high over the ocean.

It's a lot better out here than it is back in his stinking, empty-bottle-filled hotel room.

The cat doesn't reply. It twines around his leg, fluffy tail held high, and sniffs at his bare feet.

"Hey. I need those toes." 

It licks one, then makes that disgusted-cat-face, pulling back to peer at him in disgust. Jensen sighs and picks some cheese off the burger he's holding to offer it instead. "You know, you talk almost as much as my -" 

His … his … they didn’t ever really put words around it. 

The cat headbutts his leg, and then when he doesn't move, lost in thought, it stands up on its hind legs to reach for the cheese, demanding. Jensen sighs and gives it. 

"I feel like hell. Don't look at me like that. You’re a weird cat with stubby legs, you can’t tell me off for dinking. Drinking. Thing.” 

… not that the cat said anything. But it’s still looking at him, crankily, and then it turns and marches off.

Feels kind of familiar.

*

“I think that cat’s following you, dude.”

Jensen peers over his star-shaped glasses in the direction Pooch is pointing, narrowing his eyes against the glare. Same cat. Stubby legs, too much grey fluff, a catlike selfcontained grace. “Huh. Do you think it’s cos I smell good?” 

“You don’t smell good.”

“Maybe I smell good to cats?” 

“... I mean, if cats like the smell of day-old whisky, sure.” 

“It’s tequila,” Jensen says, and tries to sniff his armpit surreptitiously. "I think." 

He thinks the cat might be laughing at him.

*

The problem with Antigua is the ocean. It’s - it’s just - it’s a fucking _problem_. If Jake never has to go swimming in the ocean again it won’t be too soon.

It’s just fucking blue, that’s all, and there’s - blue sea, blue sky - there’s so much of it, so much blueness, and it’s like part of him is _always_ just waiting for the damn thunderclap and flash of light. How can anyone like the ocean? The ocean is fucking _awful_.

Plus, Cougs hated beach work too. Sand in his guns always brought on more creative swearing than usual.

So all in all, he’s pretty sure that it’s a dream, right now. Just the usual one. Nothing new, nothing different, nothing he hasn’t seen before. Ocean right out to the horizon, blank and blue and awful, and a cloudless blue sky above, and Pooch’s plane coming, but too goddamn slow, and he knows what’s coming, he knows - 

The flash of light - 

But the plane’s making a different noise, softer, warmer, and also, it smells, it smells bad, and -

Jensen wakes up, heart trying to claw its way out of his chest, to find that his face is pressed into warm, smelly fur and there’s purring.

 

“I don’t know how the fuck you got in here,” he says, later, “but you aren’t staying while you smell like that.”

*

“Jensen. Bro. Why are your arms covered in scratches?”

Jensen looks at his arms. Looks back at Pooch.

“... would you believe me if I said I had a horrific accident with a lawnmower?” 

“Mm. Lawnmower with claws?” 

“Why would you ever get a lawnmower without claws, Poochie? You’re missing out.”

*

He has the dreams less often, after that. And the cat seems happier after its bath, and when he’s brushed the mats out of its fur.

It’s not as good as waking up used to be, before. But even a small furry body in the bed helps anchor him to reality. And it doesn’t take long for the cat to start demanding breakfast from him in the mornings.

“You're not moving in with me,” Jensen tells it, but it doesn’t seem to care.

*

One year to the day. Pooch joins him again, down by the shore. So does Stegler.

Briefly.

Not many things feel good any more, but telling Stegler where to go sure does.

*

On the way home, he spots a silhouette by the side of the road that makes his heart jump aggressively in his chest - nothing special, just an old, beat-up cowboy hat. It’s not even the right colour. It’s not even made of leather, it’s a cheap tourist hat, they sell them in all the beach junkshops.

The cat is asleep in it, curled up small and warm.

Jake swallows something down and crouches to pick up the hat, cat and all, and he carries it carefully back to his room.

“You win,” he says, quietly, and looks out at the ocean. It's not an endless blue, after all. There are shades of green and grey, deep blues and teals. The light hits the waves when they break, like a long, slow, lazy wink from the sea.

The cat chirps happily. Jensen looks back at it. 

“All right, asshole. You fucking win. You can stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> There's a whole bunch of shifter fic in this fandom and I did not think I would be into it, but I am officially INTO IT.
> 
> Not that this is technically shifter fic but like ... it might be. You don't know.


End file.
